Good as Gone

by Amy Gentry

  Julie, five, lay on the concrete, her head tipped back to see the giant arc of rushing water from a safe distance. While Tom gathered Jane up in his arms, I lay down next to Julie so that I could see what she saw. I remember her warm head nestled into my temple, her wispy hair blowing against my cheek. Together we listened to the sounds of Tom comforting Jane, barely audible over the noise from the waterfall. The water slammed down the wall so fast that it hardly looked like it was moving at all.

  When Julie spoke, her words went right into my ear. “Mommy,” she said. “Is the sky falling down?”

  I made a mental note to repeat it to Tom later that night, after the girls went to bed, and said in a loud voice that the water noise turned into a whisper, “Don’t worry, honey, it can’t get us here.”

  I felt rather than saw her brave little smile.

  Seen from a distance, silhouetted against the lit-up Water Wall and framed by a stone archway, they could be a couple taking engagement photos: Gretchen and Maxwell, their hands clasped together, Gretchen leaning backward in a graceful bow shape against his weight. Then he jerks her forward like a dancer and clasps his arms around her, and they become one dark figure, waltzing back and forth in front of the illuminated wall of water. But as I hurry toward them over wet grass that gets muddier closer to the fountain, I see her elbows angling out as she tries to push him away, his arms pinning them back down again. They are both fighting to get at her purse, which looks as if it has been wrapped around her neck in the struggle. I break into a run.

  I always forget how loud the Water Wall is up close, a pounding roar that changes pitch and intensity with my every step, fading one moment into the background in the manner of white noise, then throbbing with renewed intensity. A mist fills the round concrete plaza in front of the curved wall of the fountain, making the ground treacherously slippery, and at night the light is a yellowish, jaundiced glow emanating from the underwater fountain lights. Just as I cross under the archway onto the plaza, the conjoined silhouettes tilt alarmingly and skid on their fulcrum. Gretchen stumbles backward over something lying on the ground and then she’s down, her head bouncing at the impact, Maxwell collapsing on top of her. He continues to flail for a moment like some deep-sea creature washed up on the shore, then pulls back, separating their bodies. A sliver of light outlines his beard and briefly illuminates a panicked snarl of animal rage on his face before he leans into the darkness, reaching for the purse that is now lying halfway under Gretchen’s limp body on the wet concrete.

  The man who did this to me. That’s what she called Maxwell on the recording. I don’t know what he did or who she is, but seeing his hand reach toward her motionless form, I know I have to stop what he’s going to do next.

  I propel myself forward as hard as I can, and then my shoes are sliding on the wet concrete, just as Gretchen’s did a moment before, and my feet slip out from under me. I manage to get my hand out in front of me and drop to one shin, but my teeth close on a millimeter of tongue when I hit the ground, and a flower of heat spreads through my mouth. Maxwell sees me and springs to his feet, still straddling Gretchen’s limp body. When he opens his mouth and speaks, his deep voice carries over the rushing of the water behind him, just as it carried over the sea of voices at the Circle of Healing.

  “I know what this looks like,” he says, panting. “But you don’t know what this girl is capable of. She’s dangerously disturbed. She lies. She’s a killer.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, but I can’t hear my own words, and I know that the lying part is true.

  “She’s been stalking me, making threats. She tried to blackmail me. She wants my money.” He gestures toward a duffle bag lying slumped on the wet ground a few feet away. “She forced me to come here, threatened me. And then she attacked me.” I look down at the unmoving body on the concrete. “I swear, I was defending myself! She’s got a gun in her purse!”

  But it’s a mistake, because now I will never let him get that purse in his hands. “If all she wants is your money, why would she attack you?”

  He licks his lips. “Like I said, she’s disturbed. I’m successful, I help people.” His voice rises petulantly, his beard bulging over his Adam’s apple. “Girls like that can’t stand a—”

  “Girls like what?”

  He looks at me with a faint air of surprise. “Whores.”

  I suck in my breath through clenched teeth. “You don’t talk about my daughter that way,” I say. And even though it isn’t her, it suddenly is.

  He lunges for the purse but I get to him first and push him into the trough at the base of the fountain with so much explosive force that the next thing I know I’m kneeling in six inches of water on top of his chest. Behind me, his legs flail and jerk in the water, kicking toward my back, my head, but I am mostly in the air and he is mostly underwater, which makes me heavier, temporarily. My knees are on his shoulders, and I can feel his hand grabbing for my hair, and Good luck, motherfucker, I think; I cut it short when Julie was born, I gave it to motherhood, along with dangly earrings and peace of mind and the ability to not! give! a! fuck! about! anyone! And! dreams! of! my! own! And! a! heart! in! my! body! With my fingers snarled in his tangled hair, I slam his head on the bottom of the fountain as hard as I can, like punching through the bathroom door when I thought Julie was hurt on the other side, but the water puts up too much resistance and what I get instead of a smack is a splash and a host of crazy shadows leaping up and careening away to the rhythm of my rage.

  Behind me a voice cuts through the thundering water. “John David.” There’s a click I recognize from my fantasies. In the split second that my grip relaxes, he is scrabbling backward, kicking me away, until he’s up against the water-covered slope. And then I see a look on Maxwell’s face that says he wishes he hadn’t kicked me away so quickly, and when I turn, I know why.

  Gretchen is standing, holding the gun.

  The pounding of the falling water is like a blank piece of paper, and the gun is the point of a pencil hovering a millimeter above it, sketching the three of us invisibly on the air before committing us to the page.

  Our bodies hold the corners of a triangle open: The man with his hands up in front of him, back pressed against the slope, water pouring over his shoulders and pummeling his neck so that his head shakes with the effort of steadiness. Me on one knee in the water, frozen in the act of rising. Gretchen, standing with the gun.

  “Esther,” says Maxwell. “Please.”

  She ignores him, addresses me instead. “He’s right, you know. I’ve had sex for money, more times than I can count. That makes me a whore. I’ve done a lot worse things too. Lied and stolen from the people who loved me. Used them. Left them.”

  “Julie,” I say, forgetting.

  She snaps toward me, and the gun flickers my way. When I flinch, the gun moves to Maxwell again. “Don’t call me that. I’m done with Julie.”

  Something breaks off inside. It feels like a piece of my lungs, or like the water in the fountain is boiling and the skin is falling off my foot from the ankle down. That is all an exaggeration. What I should say is that it feels like all the parts of my body are going their separate ways. It feels like I am being abandoned by everything that has ever felt like a part of me. Maybe once you’ve been left by the most important person in your life, you can never be unleft again. Maybe you’re destined to be abandoned even by your own guts, maybe your foot walks off with your thighbone, why not, stranger things have happened.

  Like, for example, right at this instant, Gretchen, or Esther, or whoever she is, is pointing the gun at Maxwell and saying words that make no sense.

  “I went back to our old place, John David. It took me forever to figure out where it was. I couldn’t remember what the house looked like from the outside, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not there anymore. Just an empty lot, except for the police tape, and a cross, and a bunch of flowers and teddy bears.” She pauses. “I guess after you convinced me I killed Ch
arlotte, you just bricked up the bunker and started over. God knows I’ve tried to do the same.” Her face is already too wet from the spray in the air for me to see tears, but I can hear her gasping. “But other people care about that dead girl in there. You should see all the candles. Nobody knows who she is, but they don’t just smooth it over and move on.” She takes a step forward. “Neither do I. I didn’t kill anyone. I’m not thirteen anymore, and you can’t tell me it’s my fault.” She takes another step forward and levels the gun. “I won’t let you.”

  “Help me, Anna, please help me,” Maxwell says, a couple of yards to my left.

  As unobtrusively as possible, I steady my foot on the bottom of the fountain.

  “Stay back!” she yells.

  “Okay,” I say. It feels like there’s a wall between us, seething with metric tons of water that I have to push through. “Gretchen.”

  That gets her attention. Her head jerks toward me.

  “I know who you are. And I know about Cal.” I’m rising slowly to my feet. “I know it was his. Maybe you love him.”

  She says, “Don’t.”

  “I just want you to think about what you’re doing. Think before you pull the trigger.”

  “I’ve had plenty of time to think.”

  “Me too,” I say. I’m standing now, still in the water. I begin to slowly inch one foot forward. “I don’t think you’re a killer.”

  “I’m nothing.”

  But she’s not nothing to me. For the past month, I’ve fed and clothed this girl. I’ve held her sobbing body on the bathroom floor. I’ve sat in waiting rooms praying for her to be okay, and I don’t pray. I can’t take my eyes off her now or the gun will go off. One foot is almost to the lip of the fountain. Every step I take toward her, her face looks younger and younger. I am fighting the wall, dragging my feet through her resistance as if it’s a river running fast. “You’re my daughter.”

  I am close enough to put a hand across her wrists. They are stone, untrembling.

  “Julie.”

  She shakes her head at me. “Anna,” she whispers with frightened eyes.

  “Mom.” I gently wrap my fingers around the muzzle of the gun, expecting any moment to feel a searing, scalding heat.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” she says, and I’m barely close enough to hear it.

  “Whoever you are, I love you,” I say. And then I have the gun in my hands, and I’m feeling for the safety, slowly and carefully, as I keep my eyes glued to hers. “And whatever he did, it’s not worth ruining your life over.”

  “He kidnapped Julie.” Her eyes are wide and blue. “Mom. It’s him.”

  The words slow everything down, expanding the waterfall’s roar around an eye of silence. At my feet, the duffle bag has burst open, and shiny stacks of paper are sliding out, dampening and unfolding in the mist. As the breeze flip-flops one of them over the concrete, I see that it’s a church bulletin.

  Somewhere inside the eye of silence, Maxwell is screaming: “She’s a liar, Anna!”

  But something she said a moment ago is ringing in my ears. The bunker. The police tape. Our old place.

  “I see you know my name,” I say to him, and pull the trigger.

  Esther

  was a virgin, an orphan girl living with her uncle Mordecai. But Esther was made for great things.

  One day the King of Light called her to his palace, for he needed a new wife, and she was the most beautiful virgin in all the land. Esther was scared. She was only a girl, and she did not want to shame herself in the King of Light’s palace in her dirty clothes. But she recognized the voice of God in the King of Light’s call, and she knew that when the Lord calls, He must be obeyed. So she went to the king. He saw her and loved her immediately, but he refused to touch her. “Your garments are dirty,” he said. “You must not defile my bed.”

  What happened then?

  Esther wept for shame.

  Esther wept for shame. But the King of Light said, “Don’t cry, my child. Have faith in the Lord, and one day you will be cleaner and more beautiful than you have ever imagined.” And what did she think?

  She thought he must be mistaken.

  Because?

  Because she was unworthy.

  But?

  She did not question the King of Light.

  Why?

  Because he spoke with the Lord’s voice.

  “What must I do?” Esther asked.

  “You must live in the palace with my concubines for a year,” he said.

  Esther heard the Lord’s voice in the commands of the king, and she knew that the Lord must be obeyed. So she bowed her head and went to live with the concubines.

  The concubines bathed and perfumed her and braided her hair. For a year they did not clothe her, so that she would learn humility. They taught her ways of pleasing the King of Light. They beat her when she spoke, but never left a scar. She never thought of running away, for she was willing to endure all for love of the King of Light, who was chosen of the Lord.

  How did she feel?

  She felt so alone. She felt like she was dead.

  But?

  But she knew that her clay was being shaped for the spirit.

  So?

  So she endured.

  Other maidens were sent to the house of the concubines, and she saw them weep and complain, and some of them fled. But in the whole year, Esther never wept a single tear, and though other maidens were sent to the King of Light’s bed, Esther knew they had not pleased him, for they returned to the house of concubines afterward and became the king’s slaves.

  One day, a year after she had first seen the King of Light, he called her to his bed. He was so pleased with her that he chose her to be his queen, the Queen of Light. And from that day forward she has been God’s chosen.

  What does she do?

  She follows the Lord’s commandments.

  How?

  She listens to her king.

  Who is her king?

  The King of Light.

  Who is she?

  The Queen of Light.

  Is she happy?

  This was the part she got wrong at first. Too many times. She had a round, red spot on the inside of her upper arm from the first time, purple and faded. The new ones were on the insides of her thighs.

  But not today.

  Is she happy?

  No.

  Why isn’t she happy?

  The Lord does not want her to be happy.

  What does He want?

  He wants her to be good.

  And?

  He wants her to be clean.

  And?

  He wants her to be beautiful.

  She is, Esther. She is.

  And then she closed her eyes. The part that always came next didn’t hurt at all anymore.

  During the day, he preached, and she, his first disciple, held the basket. She wore a sheet wrapped around her, all the way up and over her head at first, like a hood, until he spied a wig in a trash can out in an alleyway behind a building. From then on she wore the wig. It was a black, curly wig with a plasticky halo of frizz at the crown, and half of it was longer than the other, like something you would get at a Halloween store in a plastic bag. The underneath part of it was stiff and scratchy from being crumpled in one position for too long. It poked into her head. It smelled like garbage.

  John David said it was to cover her hair, which had grown almost down to her waist and darkened from white-blond to gold. Her hair, he said, was a powerful blessing. God had wreathed her in light. She covered it when they were outdoors so that others wouldn’t make her unclean by looking at it.

  With the wig, she no longer had to wrap the sheet over her head. She got her peripheral vision back, and this meant she had to relearn to ignore the way people looked at them. She kept her face down most of the time anyway. She barely heard the words that John David yelled at passersby, although she could see their feet as they hurried past them. In his hands, a cardboard sign;
at her feet, a basket. If she stared down at the feet hard enough, if she willed them to, sometimes a pair would stop in front of her and throw money into the basket. When this happened, John David never faltered in his harangue, but she could feel how pleased he was with her.

  On the best days, they sang.

  He would take the money out of the house, away from her, and come home late, smelling sweet and sour, and collapse into his bed without visiting her in the little room. This was the thing she liked most in the world: when he was pleased with her and fell asleep without touching her.

  She wanted to be alone with herself, sometimes. She wanted to meditate on her sins. They were legion.

  Once they went to the soup kitchen, but the soup kitchen was filled with men who looked, to her, like wild beasts in their dank overcoats and stained sweatshirts. Most of the men left her alone, but a few didn’t. A man she sat next to at the long cafeteria table grinned and put his hand between her thighs. She froze. John David was gone for only a moment, and when he came back and saw the leering, stubbly face, he knew what was happening. The man knew too, and he jerked his hand away like it had been burned and picked up his tray and skittered off.

  Esther was filled with shame. Later she was punished.

  The food pantry, by contrast, was frequented by women with shopping carts and squalling babies who lined up outside until it opened. The food pantry was just a shed in the parking lot of a church, and it wasn’t heated, and the people who ran the food pantry were as cold as the cans of peas and corn they passed over the counter. Some days it was all soggy green beans, and when they opened the cans at home and ate the beans, John David made her drink the olive-green salty water with its floating bits of bean skin afterward, because her wrists looked alarming poking out of her robes. Other times they got refried beans, her favorite, and small cans of peaches and pears in syrup. She saved the curled-up aluminum lids, tabs still attached, under her bunk, where they were—not hidden, exactly, but hers. She had no secrets from John David, and he could see everything anyway. He knew the lids were there but benevolently let her have a dark place to hide. While the bed creaked beneath them, she meditated on the accumulation of silver curves, imagined herself ice-skating along their dramatic slopes, hopping from one to the other, or even sailing in them like little boats, and then the boats turned to flower petals bobbing in a pond, and then for one horrible moment they were metal again, scratching and screeching against one another. And then all was silent and he was gone.